Travel With Your Parents
I am really hoping that the trend of traveling with your parents continues for the next 10 – 20 years. I wrote 10 and then felt ill thinking about only having 10 years of trips ahead of us before the twins ditch us, so I extended it to 20. But in all honesty, I hope they’ll take me with them forever.
They are my favourite people to travel with. I mean, yes, Josh, too. But the twins are funny and clever, and they know interesting things, and the Wolvog is amazing with a map. Or even without a map. He somehow instantly memorizes how to get from A to B and gets us there.
They told me they’d continue to travel with me, mainly because they know we’ll stay in a good hotel. But I also know that I probably said the same thing, not imagining that I’d end up being okay with hostels and that airfare is cheap when you’re a student.
So the trend is exactly what I want. I just kind of wanted it to start later when I needed it.
2 comments
I am sure my daughter will continue to travel with me for as long as I make plans that include her. She likes when other people make decisions, especially when they incorporate her suggestions.
I travelled domestically with my parents. My first international trip was on my own, for a year, at 17. It wasn’t until my parents visited me in Thailand (where I was back, working, ten years later) that we travelled together again. I loved seeing them on their first ever overseas trip, my mother being adventurous taking tuk-tuks on her own in Bangkok (in the days before cell-phones, with only a card with our address written on it), my father relishing the new experiences. I am forever sad that I was never able to take him to South Africa, or Canada. He would have adored them both.
It’s great you want to travel with your kids, and they want to travel with you too. (A BIL and SIL and their kids are like this.) I’m sure they will want to travel on their own too, as no doubt you will want them to. After so long stuck at home with covid, travel will be such a wonderful liberating activity filled with self-discovery for them. It’s so exciting that they’re coming to that age now.